What happens if six illustrious scholars put themselves together? That they could also make a sixfold flop.(Genetic Continuity in the Franco-Cantabrian Region: New Clues from Autochthonous Mitogenomes, Alberto Gómez-Carballa et al.).

On 14 May 2011 (thread: The case of Euphratic) I wrote:

“Rich, I think that Gamkrelidze and pretty all the others are thinking that this theory is a proof in favour of their theories, i.e. an origin of IE in that region of Asia, South of Caucasus. I, of course, think that it isn’t expected, not only because I have theorized from many years the origin of some haplogroups found there from Western Europe and specifically Italy: R1b1b2 is controversial but by chance I demonstrated just on this forum, replying to Humanist, that mt HV4, thought of Middle Eastern origin, is clearly European (I said Italian, or Russian the other possibility)”.

Now this paper, not only denies any origin of HV4 in Middle East, but says that its origin is in “Russia”, and this was one of the possibilities I took in consideration. But but…

1) the paper seems conceived and directed by the two Hispanics and probably had the purpose to demonstrate the theory of the Franco-Cantabrian Refugium. This doesn’t dislike to Achilli, who was one of the theorists of it. Interesting the participation of Doron Behar, who has recently participated to the paper which thought having demonstrated the Middle Eastern origin of mt H. But probably he has been used in the paper for recruiting the FTDNA’s mt-s.And which will be the proof of the Franco-Cantabrian Refugium as regards hg. HV4? That there are many HV4a1a, with an age of 5,4kya. What have to do this with the Franco-Cantabrian Refugium of at least 10ky before?It is true what says Malyarchuk et al. (a researcher I esteem very much and who demonstrated the peopling of East Europe by many mt hgs from South Europe after the LGM):

“Despite the low coalescence time estimates obtained for N9a3a (~1.3–2.3 kya) it is quite probable that its founder had been introduced into eastern Europe much earlier taking into account the age of a whole N9a3 estimated as 8–13 kya and the discovery of a N9a haplotypes in a Neolithic skeletons from several sites, located in Hungary and belonged to the Körös Culture and Alföld Linear Pottery Culture, which appeared in eastern Hungary in the early 8th millennium B.P.” (page 7) (Miroslava Derenko, Boris Malyarchuk, Galina Denisova, Maria Perkova, Urszula Rogalla, Tomasz Grzybowski, Elza Khusnutdinova, Irina Dambueva, Ilia Zakharov, Complete Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of Eastern Eurasian Haplogroups Rarely Found in Populations of Northern Asia and Eastern Europe).

But this should be worth always, also for R1b1a2, which could be also young (I don’t think so), but its ancestor could have come to Western Europe many thousands of years before.2) What to say about Italy? It has all the most ancient subclades:a) HV4 (14.2kya)b) HV4a (13.5kya)c) HV4a2 (9.3kya), and it is of course the usual prejudice that what is in Italy has come always from elsewhere)d) HV4a1 (10.4kya)e) HV4a1a4a, always understood like a migration from Iberia, but it isn’t said.

Have these illustrious scholars demonstrated false my theory of the Italian Refugium? I think just not at all.

The case 44 of the paper is of unknown origin, but he has the mutations

14518 11944 11389 5978 3645 146

and he matches closely our NealtheRed, whose mother comes from Centrella (Avellino).NealtheRed lacks the mutation 3645. Then probably 44 is from Italy and considering how Greeks (case 42) come frequently from Italy, due to the Venetian colonization, I think we can say that the centre of the haplogroup, i.e. HV4a with its subclades HV4a1 and HV4a2, is overwhelmingly Italian.The time of the expansion is just that of the Younger Dryas, as I have always said.

This has written Gail Tonnesen on “Dienekes’ Anthropology blog”:“I didn't look closely at the HV4* results, I only looked at HV4a. Taking a closer look at HV4*:There are two new results in GenBank that were not included in the paper, and Phylotree has also been updated, probably after the paper was submitted.AY738941 and JQ272477 are HV4c and both have ancestry in Italy.HM852851 and EF222234 are HV4b, HM852851 is Turkic from Schoenberg, and EF222234 is from a Malyarchuck study of Slavs, although they don't specify the ethnicity of this sample. That leaves 2 that are HV4*, EF417833 from FTDNA with unknown ancestry, and EU545447 from Malyarchuck with Russian ancestry. Given the small sample size, it could indicate ancestry in eastern or southern Europe, or it might simply reflect over sampling bias from those regions. Given the split in HV4a1 in southern Europe and HV4a2 in the Middle East, I still think an origin in the Near East seem more likely, but obviously we will need a much large sample size to say anything with confidence. To say that these results prove an eastern European origin is over reaching”.

The theory of an Eastern origin (from South Russia) of this haplogroup to Middle East is denied also by the last Phylotree update, which has created an HV4a2 (mutations 7805 and 16129) present in Italy (JN214429) and Egypt, and an HV4a2a (mutations 16221!, 16287, 16311), that of the Assyrians. Then the diffusion didn’t happen from East to Egypt to Italy, but the other way around: from Italy to Egypt to Assyrians.Also what the paper says about the HV4a1a4a present in South Italy is absurd, both for the age (0,4kya with the mutations 6230, 12034A and 16355 from the node of HV4a1a4, plus the mutation 16311 of the case 34) and by the fact that the link of this subclade is with French and not with Spaniards.Since beyond the six authors named above there is also Prof David Caramelli of Florence University like the editor, I can say that the flop isn’t sixfold but sevenfold one.

The recent paper of Coia et al., Evidence of high genetic variation among linguistically diverse populations on a micro-geographic scale: a case study of the Italian Alps, JoHG, 15 March 2012, even though not for free but with the supplements readable, and even though the mitochondrions aren’t full tested but from 16033 to 114 and 17 SNPs, gives us many interesting information on the haplogroups of the most conservative zones of the Ladin speaking people of the Alps, linked closely to Italians.Of course the pretension of the authors to separate who is ancient Italian like the Ladin speakers and who isn’t should be discussed by reading the paper. It is certain that in Trentino-Alto Adige there are many very ancient haplotypes of the Italian Refugium, for instance many HV, HV+16311, HV+73, HV0, HV1 and even a HV4a (16093-16221-16519), many K1, at the origin of this haplogroup (this zone was probably at the origin of the haplogroup, like I have always said, and Bryan Sykes too before me), R0a and R0a1a, not only in the Tuscan region like someone pretended recently, even an U8b1, at the origin of K etc. That the other haplogroups are ancient European is notorious.There is also a J1b1b1 like our friend Joe Merante, thought by me of Jewish origin but from Khazars and Buryats, but, at this point, who does know?

ListA set of 39 mtDNA sequences has appeared on GenBank.They are to accompany a paper (unpublished as yet):Gomez-Carballa,A., Olivieri,A., Behar,D., Achilli,A. and Torroni,A.Genetic continuity in the Franco-Cantabrian region: new clues from a mtDNA lineage

And what are they waiting for to publish it after that I have broken it in pieces? Perhaps to write it again.

SMGF is Sorenson Molecular Genetic Foundation and was the Mormons' genetic researches. They did a test for free and put the data on their site (www.smgf.org) asking only a pedigree of the person tested which they put in their database. I think that now it is of GeneTree's and it isn't for free, but their database is available yet with thousands of mt and Y data.